If we really are living in a computer simulation is there anything we can do ?

ATS can be a rich deep database view.
There is a huge superposition of key material available for the purpose of validation.
We only read a very small percentage of the material with any kind of shared currency though.
Chat tends to be limited like some kind of simple lisp dialogue.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: Barcs
If we are in a simulation than theoretically there should be a way to hack into the programming from here and manipulate anything.

As someone already basically said, that would be like Pac Man figuring out how to get out of the maze.

Somebody with a game genie type device could very much hack pac man and get him out. Pac man isn't intelligent nor self aware, his every move is directly controlled, so the situation is not comparable. The same is not true with us. Huge difference. If we are a program, there should be a way to figure it out by experimenting and getting down to the core coding of something, but instead most things makes logical sense and have natural origins when studied. Plus, it doesn't make sense to have a program or simulation with so much wasted coding on extra things like big bang, quadrillions of unnecessary stars, fake origins of everything down to the last quantum particle? That's the type of thing that makes a program run like crap and crash all the time.

We are not in any way similar to a programmed environment. In a programmed environment, you are limited and things just are the way they are without explanations of origins. They are just there, programmed graphics. But this universe is way more than that.

a reply to: Barcs

Even low cost AI systems are very good at sorting message traffic, even choosing anagrams based on context.
Some of our more advanced photographic evidence of UFOs might keep the bots guessing for a while.

originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: Barcs

Even low cost AI systems are very good at sorting message traffic, even choosing anagrams based on context.
Some of our more advanced photographic evidence of UFOs might keep the bots guessing for a while.

True, but programming a conscious self aware being and an improbably complex and vast universe that it resides in, is a whole other level completely.

a reply to: Barcs

I think your missing the point. I think the person was saying we are the Pac-Man in the simulation.
Pac-Man himself cannot use a game genie outside of the simulation to hack himself out.
He is stuck in the maze forever hungry and forever fearful of dying from four ghosts.

originally posted by: Deluxe
I think your missing the point. I think the person was saying we are the Pac-Man in the simulation.
Pac-Man himself cannot use a game genie outside of the simulation to hack himself out.
He is stuck in the maze forever hungry and forever fearful of dying from four ghosts.

I think you missed the point. The Pacman comparison is invalid. You are comparing a controlled video game, to a self aware, conscious being. If anything it's more like the Sims, and even that is exponentially simpler than programming consciousness (if that's even possible).

a reply to: Barcs

I quote you

"We are not in any way similar to a programmed environment. In a programmed environment, you are limited and things just are the way they are without explanations of origins. They are just there, programmed graphics. But this universe is way more than that."

The speed of light is just what it is without explanation or origin. Seems like it's programmed as a constant.
We can't explain why it is what it is or for that matter other constants of nature. In order to keep the speed of light constant in every reference frame time has to dilate and length has to contract. Seems programmed to me.

Quantum mechanics reveals that a particle can be in two places at once. This is not intuitive or explained.

Heck the universe just is without explanation of origin.

I think you just strengthened the simulation argument by trying to prove it incorrect.

a reply to: Barcs

True that Pac-Man is usually played by someone but it can easily be programmed to play itself.

a reply to: freedom7

A computer simulation can have randomness.
What can we do?
Enjoy the ride I guess.

If you believe you have free will then you have free will.

a reply to: Deluxe

That's what I meant yes! I think it would be hard to get tools outside the system to get you out. And why would you get out when you don't know what's there?

The "real" outside might not even contain atoms as we know them and have a completly different set of natural laws. To even operate in that environment you would have to change everything about yourself.

Follow the infinite worlds thinking I mentioned earlier, even a simulated world might share that characteristic. So you just escaped to the next simulated world, and the next etc. Like Russian dolls

a reply to: Barcs

Much of the improbably complex illusion comes after some basic choices have been made A priori, before justification.
All the contemporary government and religious psyop programs are designed with this in mind.
Robots are neatly sorted without any possibility of true self awareness in that time frame.
That is why non dualistic training such as found within the Scientology teachings gained ground for those living the multi-reality paradigm.

a reply to: freedom7

In an infinite fractal multiverse - Every Single Thing you could ever do you already ARE doing, an infinite number of times, for infinity.

Free will would be an illusion of sentient real-time perception, but an essential one.


IF versions of you do everything possible, forever - then the only thing you can really say is that whatever choices get you to the end of your life - that ending version of you had to exist, it couldn't not exist. There'd be no version of you good or bad that doesn't exist as part of an infinite fractal hologram waiting to be "choose-your-own-adventure"d by a piece of infinite consciousness separating into a finite and playing it out in real-time.

IF that is the case, so far I'm really glad I'm playing this version it could be infinitely worse. I will do my best.

a reply to: maus80

I have a friend who is experiencing problems accessing information on the internet with his computer.
Intel has posted several updated driver programs to address unforeseen issues with one of their new graphics chip offerings.
The end of his life as a sentient that is allowed the freedoms a personal computer offers is near.
He has already stated a preference for just being put on tablet.

originally posted by: Deluxe
The speed of light is just what it is without explanation or origin. Seems like it's programmed as a constant.We can't explain why it is what it is or for that matter other constants of nature. In order to keep the speed of light constant in every reference frame time has to dilate and length has to contract. Seems programmed to me.

Or that's just the speed of light in a vacuum and how it behaves naturally. Being unable to explain everything in existence isn't a good argument for it being programmed or simulated. It just shows we don't know everything.

Quantum mechanics reveals that a particle can be in two places at once. This is not intuitive or explained.

And how does that change with the explanation of being programmed? How does one program something to be in 2 places at once?

Heck the universe just is without explanation of origin.

I think you just strengthened the simulation argument by trying to prove it incorrect.

How? Your argument is an appeal to ignorance. You are basically saying that we don't know XYZ, therefor simulation. Your explanation doesn't solve any of those problems, it's just easier to comprehend that assumption. It's just like assuming god exists because we don't know how the universe came about. Again, in a program, it doesn't make sense to program fake origins and waste billions of lines of code on things that don't affect the function of the program in the least.

True that Pac-Man is usually played by someone but it can easily be programmed to play itself.

Maybe it can, but that doesn't mean Pac-man becomes self aware and begins running scientific experiments to figure out where he is. The program randomly would choose between various outcomes (ie move up, move down, move left, move right) to eat all the pills. IF Pac-man was able to learn about his reality, do you think everything would have natural origins in the program? (IE, the walls of the maze shown to emerge via gravity and big bang, or the pills shown to evolve over billions of years, or pacman himself evolving?)

Don't get me wrong, I admit it's a possibility, I just don't agree with it. Something like that would be insanely complex, and then you would have to explain where the programmers and people in the "REAL" world came from, and you are back to the same problems when it comes to origins and explanations for things. I get that it's a sexy alternative to god for science minded folks and sounds cool, but there are too many problems with it, IMO. The biggest issue is the fact that we have natural origins for almost everything. In a programmed world, things would just be and would work without natural explanations. You wouldn't need to program a planet moving around a star to have light and heat. It would just be light and everything would work out without explanations. You wouldn't need tides, seasons, quasars, black holes, a hundred billion galaxies, dimensions, etc. There would be no reason to program all that extra flack.

a reply to: Barcs

Pac-Man is an not a good example to use. I think it was used to be humorous.
Suppose I create a computer program with a character inside programmed to discover how it's virtual world operates.
I have no doubt this can be done.
I would be interesting to see the results of that experiment and how much knowledge that character could come up with.
My hunch is that the programmed character could not figure out anything outside of it's virtual world. Outside of the program itself.

I believe strongly that we're in a simulation, and that the entire point is to learn to live without hatred, greed, jealousy.

I use the simulation theory In the fiction that I write, UFO and Breakaway Civilization as told by alien -abductee,(novel is linked in my sig, or here www.amazon.com... I have used the simulation as part of the plot.

But, what I think is key, is that in my mind, the "programmers" are "god" and that the messages we have been sent "love one another" , the 10 commandments, the Beatitudes, those come from "guides" sent by the programmer as to the key to ever-lasting life, coming to love one another over material goods is the key.

I think "sleep" is necessary to download the memories of that day - even our scientists say that sleep is key to memory, and in the book I make it also the key to maturation.

i cannot think of any other reason that consciousness is so centered into physics the way it is if our "brains" were not needed s part of the simulation. Consciousness is required to collapse the wave function to a particle, and the "measurement problem" unifies consciousness to physical reality, you can't have one without the other, so in my mind the simulation theory is the most obvious answer.

I do think the that the game comes with a an owner's manual, since recorded history we have heard "prophets" telling us to reject the material world and nurture the soul in any number of faiths. That and "above all else, love one another" seems important. That's what my abductee protagonist decides.

a reply to: Scrubdog

I would like to point out that the view that it takes consciousness to collapse the wave function is a dated and unpopular view now among scientists.

originally posted by: Deluxe
a reply to: Barcs

Pac-Man is an not a good example to use. I think it was used to be humorous.
Suppose I create a computer program with a character inside programmed to discover how it's virtual world operates.
I have no doubt this can be done.
I would be interesting to see the results of that experiment and how much knowledge that character could come up with.
My hunch is that the programmed character could not figure out anything outside of it's virtual world. Outside of the program itself.

I see what you are saying, but consciousness and self awareness is big reason why we try to figure out our own environment. Without an explanation to that, the programming explanation doesn't make much sense. If you had a really intelligent self aware entity trying to figure things out, they might have success in a program. OR they might just realize that they can't understand anything about the world and would be creationist, because there wouldn't be natural explanations for things and cause and effect. Things would just be programmed to be.

originally posted by: Deluxe
a reply to: Scrubdog

I would like to point out that the view that it takes consciousness to collapse the wave function is a dated and unpopular view now among scientists.

Perhaps you can provide some citations to your claim?

I am not a theoretical physicist but I keep rather current through Youtube videos on presentations by Greene, Tedmark, Susskind, and I don't see the idea as dated at all. The measurement problem and double slit experiment remain as big an enigma today as ever. I just watched a panel discussion from the World Science Festival from 2015 - so you must be talking REAlLY new.
YOur response sounds pretty snotty.

originally posted by: Scrubdog
But, what I think is key, is that in my mind, the "programmers" are "god" and that the messages we have been sent "love one another" , the 10 commandments, the Beatitudes, those come from "guides" sent by the programmer as to the key to ever-lasting life, coming to love one another over material goods is the key.

Then why did the "guides" send out conflicting messages about supporting slavery and commanding people to kill innocent children, if it was all about loving one another? Something doesn't add up with that.

I think "sleep" is necessary to download the memories of that day - even our scientists say that sleep is key to memory, and in the book I make it also the key to maturation.

Yes, being well rested is a big part of promoting healthy brain function and healing for the body. I know this because I have severe sleep apnea and need the CPAP machine to sleep each night. If I don't use it, I lose oxygen while I sleep and never get fully rested. It's a huge difference in my life. There are physical benefits to it that are well known to scientists.

i cannot think of any other reason that consciousness is so centered into physics the way it is if our "brains" were not needed s part of the simulation. Consciousness is required to collapse the wave function to a particle, and the "measurement problem" unifies consciousness to physical reality, you can't have one without the other, so in my mind the simulation theory is the most obvious answer.

This is completely false. Deluxe is correct above. Consciousness itself has nothing to do with collapsing wave function. The observations are being made by electron microscopes and the collapse has nothing to do with a conscious person observing something, it has to do with the microscope creating interference. If you measure it with a microscope, there will be no difference between consciously observing it and looking away while the microscope gets the data. I will give you a link tonight to a Neil deGrasse Tyson interview explaining this. The new age movement drastically misinterpreted the double slit experiment to promote the view that consciousness is more than a brain function.

Interesting interpretation of religion, I'll give you that.